At first glance, Roald Dahl’s The Twits does not lend itself to adaptation into a family-oriented animated feature. For one thing, it’s structured more as a series of gags than a story. For another, there is barely any mention of children—the main characters are the Twits, a despicable married couple whose lives revolve around making each other miserable.
But Writer and Director Phil Johnston saw potential at its core. In a world increasingly dominated by just the kind of nastiness the Twits represent, he says: “Kids are seeing all these bad people become powerful and wondering how it happens—I wanted to give them an answer.”
Adding two characters, Beesha and Bubsy, he reimagined Netflix’s The Twits as a story of kids fighting back against the ugliness around them and learning not to lose their empathy along the way. “Kids see much more than we think. They can see when things are wrong and corrupt and want to fix it,” says Writer Meg Favreau. Every decision, from the look of the film to the additions and diversions from the source material, was rooted in giving kids the tools to do just that.
“Our guiding principle was to create stuff that was hideous and rotten and find beauty in it,” says Johnston. That hideousness begins right from the start of the film with a flood of liquid hot dog meat. And the town itself oozes neglect, filled with intestinal motifs to match its name: Triperot. These repulsive elements are meant to test the viewer: Confronted with a daily dose of disgust, do you turn to cruelty and tyranny, like the Twits? Or do you focus on hope and beauty, like Beesha and Bubsy?
Porta-Potty Humor
Since Johnston knew that empathy for the Twits would play a pivotal role in his change to Dahl’s original ending (spoiler alert: they aren’t left for dead in the film), he had to start by creating a compelling motivation for them. He looked to a janky backyard theme park he’d visited in his past life as a journalist and thought it made sense to add this as a lifelong dream for the Twits, whom he describes as “naughty, silly, crazy, borderline six-year-olds in adult bodies.” The team came up with an assortment of revolting DIY rides ripe for visual gags (everything from a tilt-a-whirl made out of porta-potties to a dirty pile of mattresses in a pit), and they made keeping Twitlandia alive the Twits’ driving goal.
To do this, the Twits need the power of the Muggle-Wumps. In the book, the Muggle-Wumps are a family of regular monkeys, but in the film, Johnston saw an opportunity to add a touch of beauty and magic to the repugnant landscape by making them exotic, wonderful creatures from the same island as the Oompa-Loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. On a plot level, their tears power Twitlandia, but on an emotional and thematic level, their bright colors and kooky designs make them stand out against the gray-brown colors of the rest of the film, giving the child protagonists and viewers hope.
The Twits originally started out as a television series, and by the time it eventually morphed into a feature film, many of these props, characters, and backgrounds had already been built. Johnston and Favreau now had to find new ways to fit all of the elements together. “It was a very collaborative process, a lot of tossing ideas around, working together with board artists and getting their feedback,” says Favreau.
Like Johnston and Favreau, Co-Director Katie Shanahan started on the project back when it was a pilot for the series. On the film, she would take their notes to the story team and ask for suggestions, such as ways to make the Muggle-Wumps more unique and fun. She recalls brainstorming and discussing how anxious the Muggle-Wump father was. Collaboration led to Story Artist Aurry Tan boarding the father’s tic of burping up fuzzy “stress balls.” Shanahan says: “They had such amazing ideas. Just little acting moments we hadn’t even thought about.”
Decent Proposal
The animation team also played a role in the story process. Since models had been built when the project was in production for TV, they were able to start character animation while the feature was still being written, explains Animation Director Jack Kasprzak. This meant that character details already discovered during animation, like the Twits’ showy, exaggerated hand movements, could be called out and referenced in the script, which usually isn’t possible in projects where the script is locked long before animators touch it.
While character animation might seem like the right-brain, technical side of the process, it requires an understanding of how people’s choices and worldview can impact everything from facial expressions to a character’s movements. “It was really fun for animators to see their work impact the broader story,” says Kasprzak.
Kids are seeing all these bad people become powerful and wondering how it happens–I wanted to give them an answer.—Phil Johnston
Take for example Mr. Napkin, who is in charge of the children’s orphanage. He is a classic Midwesterner who listens and observes more than he speaks, so his head is hugely disproportionate to his body, giving plenty of space for facial acting. His proportions also contribute to his tight, awkward movements—until later in the film, when he becomes the opposite of his original self and has big, exaggerated motions. Because animation tests for his character were started before certain scenes were written, Johnston and Favreau could use his mannerisms as inspiration for physical gags further down the road.
The same was true of the Twits. The animators thought about everything from how their clothing restricted their movement to how they spent their leisure time in order to figure out how they moved—all things that could be used to influence storytelling. But no matter how awful the Twits behaved, the team had to remember to see them as fully developed people in order to bring them to life.
Beesha and Bubsy had to learn a similar lesson toward the end of the film. There is a moment where the kids play a terrible trick on the Twits, says Favreau, but then they realize: “We don’t want to live in this world of cruelty.”
For this sequence, Shanahan explains how cinematography was used to emphasize how close the children are to becoming like the Twits themselves. In the rest of the film, the camera is at the kids’ level (or above them in scenes where the Twits are looking down at them). But as Beesha and Bubsy “get Twitty,” Shanahan says that the camera frames them in the same way it does the Twits, with wide, uncomfortable angles.
As this storyline unfolded, it was crucial to Johnston to make it clear that Beesha and Bubsy could be decent people without having to believe that the Twits would change. Instead, the film reminds its audience that kindness and empathy are most important when people like the Twits don’t change. “Their hate is easy,” says Johnston. “If we’re going to move forward in the world, we need to choose the difficult path.”
The film shows how to navigate this path by using gross-out moments—like a delightfully disgusting sequence in which Mr. and Mrs. Twit spit worms back and forth into each other’s mouths—and making them all the more impactful because of the poignant scenes that surround them. “It’s a tonal tightrope between more earnest themes and aggressive butt jokes,” Johnston says. “We wanted to Trojan Horse thoughtful ideas into a big, dumb comedy.”
